


you can be sure that it will only get better

by quidhitch



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, if u leave a comment or a kudo i will luv u, they are soft and in love!!!! i have not written fanfiction in so long help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 11:52:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8247772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quidhitch/pseuds/quidhitch
Summary: i just want you close, where you can stay foreveri.Dex and Nursey are…. friends. The ellipses is present in every context – a pause between the end of Nursey’s joke and Dex’s corresponding smile, the hesitance of Nursey’s hand over Dex’s shoulder after a tough loss, when they’re alone and it’s quiet and the words seem to fall out of their mouths in disjointed intervals, like they’re not quite sure what they are when they’re not arguing.At the end of the year, Nursey hovers over the threshold of Dex’s dorm, both of them on opposite ends of the room, not really sure what they ought to be doing.“We could…Snapchat?” Dex suggests, dropping his shoulders.“You hate Snapchat.” Nursey rolls his eyes.





	

**i.**

Dex and Nursey are…. friends. The ellipses is present in every context – a pause between the end of Nursey’s joke and Dex’s corresponding smile, the hesitance of Nursey’s hand over Dex’s shoulder after a tough loss, when they’re alone and it’s quiet and the words seem to fall out of their mouths in disjointed intervals, like they’re not quite sure what they are when they’re not arguing.

At the end of the year, Nursey hovers over the threshold of Dex’s dorm, both of them on opposite ends of the room, not really sure what they ought to be doing.

“We could…Snapchat?” Dex suggests, dropping his shoulders.

“You hate Snapchat.” Nursey rolls his eyes.

“Whatever. I could do it.”

There’s a pause, Nursey’s eyes flit from the floor to Dex a couple times. “Yeah?”

“Sure,” Dex swallows, and he’s already thinking about how clammy his palms are going to be every time his phone buzzes, only to find it’s a damn Dominos coupon instead of a picture of Nursey’s dumb face.

“Okay,” Nursey smiles, and Dex’s heart trips over the next few beats. “We’ll Snapchat. And I’ll call you.”

“Glad we have a plan,” Dex says lamely, thinking about how he’s going to hate himself for that line the whole six-hour drive home.

“Guess I should be going.”

“Yeah, guess so.”

Nursey makes no move to go. Instead, after another long, painful ellipses – one Dex thinks might be the last of their friendship – he crosses the room in four long strides and folds Dex up in a tight hug. The way Dex’s arms immediately circle around Nursey’s shoulders feels like nature, like magnets.

“Have a good summer, dude,” Nursey says, a radiant smile on his face as he pulls back and ruffles Dex’s hair.

“Yeah,” Dex says, watching him gather his things with stars in his eyes, “you too.”

**ii.**

Eight days later Dex’s phone rings. He doesn’t look before he answers the call, hands grimy from working on his Mom’s truck all morning. He assumes it’s her calling now, checking in on him, bringing home a peanut butter sandwich. It’s not.

“Dude, I think I took home your Samwell hoodie and you took home mine. How gross is that? How are we going to recover from this?”

An immediate smile spreads on Dex’s mouth, and as hard as he tries to fight it down, to temper his excitement, to remind himself that Nursey is just barely his friend, and says, “Ew. That’s so domestic I’m going to barf.”

“I know,” Nursey’s voice is soft and pretty, and an image of him materializes in Dex’s mind – stretched out on his bed, sun filtering through his gauzy curtains, an open notebook on his pillow full of bits of poetry scrawled in rich blue ink. “Ransom and Holster are going to love it though. I just texted them – you know they’re spending break together this year? I can’t even imagine doing that…”

Dex feels kind of bad for not exactly listening to what Nursey’s saying, but the sound of his voice, his words running together in that leisurely, slow way he speaks, seems to set Dex’s pulse to a more manageable rhythm. He leans back against his Dad’s old work table, closes his eyes, and feels the shard of separation wedged in his chest begin to thaw.

**iii.**

He and Nursey both get to campus early for different reasons – Dex didn’t want to field another question about potential girlfriends, especially with the promise of Samwell and freedom on the horizon, and Nursey just didn’t have anyone to keep him home.

They arrange to meet up at Annie’s for coffee, and Nursey is late. It isn’t exactly surprising, but Dex got there twenty minutes early out of sheer excitement, making it half an hour he’s been sitting there, alone, picking at a muffin and pretending he has things to do on his phone.

The irritation that had been building in his temple breaks down when he sees Nursey burst through the front door, his flush visible even beneath a slight stubble. His skin is a shade darker and the stupid bro-tank he’s wearing puts the vein that runs over his bicep in full view. Dex is struck with the sudden and unwelcome desire to trace it. With his tongue.

Nursey’s eyes catch his and he’s bounding over, and Dex is standing up, and Dex thinks to anyone outside this experience it probably looks like they’re flinging themselves into each other’s arms. It’s such a stark contrast to their hug at the beginning of summer that Dex is laughing, breath punching out of him in short, uneven spurts.

“Damn, when did you get so snuggly?” Nursey asks as they disentangle themselves from each other.

“Shut the fuck up,” Dex says, punching Nursey’s shoulder, his grin utterly immovable.

**iv.**

The first time they kiss is on the back porch of the Haus, the fragmented motion of a dying kegster bustling inside, cool air skating across Dex’s skin (a convenient scapegoat for the goosebumps, yeah, he was definitely chilly, not thinking about brushing a stray curl away from Nursey’s forehead).

They’re both laughing at a stupid meme Shitty texted to the group chat and Dex feels an all-too-familiar flutter at the pit of his stomach when turns to look at Nursey, who has his head tipped back and his eyes closed, dark lashes sweeping elegantly over his cheeks.

“Are you okay, dude?” Dex asks, voice hoarse but buzzed enough that he thinks tacking on the ‘dude’ keeps it casual. Keeps it chill.

“Yeah,” Nursey says, opening his eyes and looking back at Dex, a slow smile spreading over his face, “you just make me happy.”

“Oh,” Dex hopes that didn’t come out as squeaky as he thinks it did. He’s suddenly acutely aware of the mere millimeters between him and Nursey on the porch, a space that seems to be shrinking by the second – is he… is he leaning in? His mind goes completely blank, some sort of all-systems shut down until Derek Malik Nurse presses their lips together in a sloppy kiss, and everything comes back into hyper-focus.

How many times had Dex been spacing out during lecture or finishing his reading for class when his mind had wandered, completely unbidden, to the details of this moment? His fingers seem to instinctively curl in the front of Nursey’s shirt and pull him closer, a motion that extracts a sigh from the back of Nursey’s throat, and suddenly Dex’s skin is very, very hot.

“Nursey,” Dex mumbles, when there’s a sucking kiss pressed to the side of his mouth, then his jaw. He can barely think, barely keep up with the steady stream of thoughts that’s rolling through his mind. It’s beautiful and hot and perfect until it isn’t, and an image of Dex’s father flashes beneath his lids, his stern voice asking when he’s going to bring a girl home reverberating through his skull just seconds later.

“Derek,” Dex repeats, and Nursey’s mouth is off his in a second, arms coming around his shoulders, green eyes wide with worry.

He can’t bring himself to let go of Nursey’s hand – it’s the only thing anchoring him to this moment, the only thing that will convince Dex it actually happened, and he really ought to savor it considering he can never do it again.

“Will?” Nursey’s voice is so soft. Dex wants to sink into it and disappear and never come out again.

“I can’t.” Dex’s voice seems to splinter just a bit at the end. He hates himself for it, grip on Nursey’s hand getting just a fraction tighter. “I-I want…” He turns to look at Nursey’s profile, jaw locking at his perfect, kiss-bruised mouth. I want. “But I can’t,” Dex says, more for his own sake, tearing his eyes off Nursey and obstinately looking at a patch of dying grass just left of his sneaker.

He thinks, for a horrible, gut-wrenching second, that Nursey will get mad at him. They go to Samwell, for God’s sake, nobody’s going to care about two guys kissing in Samwell. He’s being homophobic, but more than that he’s being an idiot. _When are we going to meet a girlfriend, Poindexter? I was getting tail my second day of college, it’s been half a semester and you’ve got no prospects?_

But instead, Nursey says “hey” and puts both of his hands on Dex’s cheeks, looking him head on, eyes like dark, wet stones in the dimming porchlights, “chill. It’s going to be okay.”

Dex gives him a tentative smile, and Nursey pulls him in for a full body hug, his arms and legs curling around Dex in an almost protective way, like the bad vibes would just bounce off his skin and go away forever.

“I’m sorry,” Dex says again, pressing his forehead into Nursey’s shoulder.

“It’s going to be okay,” Nursey repeats, his grip on Dex’s torso getting a hair tighter. Dex hangs from his shoulders like a raft in a storm.

**v.**

It’s never the same after that, and how could it be? Now Dex knows what Nursey’s mouth tastes like, the way the crook of his neck smells, how his lips feel against Dex’s pulse (every bit as soft and lush and they look).

Dex is a facts kind of guy – compsci and all – and this one simple pattern of logic seems to be slamming into him over and over every time his eyes catch on Nursey. You liked kissing him. He wants to kiss you. You could both not be suffering.

But even thinking about leaning over the couch or the kitchen table or the desk in their room and chasing Nursey’s mouth with his makes Dex so nervous he wants to vomit. It was hard enough to admit to himself he was gay, kissing Nursey on a regularly scheduled basis would mean he’d have to admit it to every single person he met from that day forward, and all the important ones from his yesterdays as well. The thought was daunting, enough to quell his romantic frustration for a time.

But days when Nursey was on the couch next to him, laying haphazardly across Dex’s lap, scribbling in a copy of some pretentious lit book with a highlighter between his teeth – well, Dex thinks the good lord might be testing him.

Nursey lets out one of those long, dramatic sighs where he’s clearly expecting whoever is in the general vicinity to ask him what’s wrong.

Dex ignores him and continues to try and puzzle out a particularly tough line of code, laptop precariously balanced on Nursey’s stomach.

An even bigger, more dramatic sigh follows, and Nursey’s whole middle heaves with it, tilting Dex’s laptop off balance. He looks from the screen to Nursey and scowls.

“What?” he asks, closing his laptop and setting it on the Haus’ pathetic excuse for a coffee table.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to understand Ondaatje on the level I want to.”

Dex, who barely made it through senior English without going bald, drops his shoulders, “I’m very sorry.”

Nursey rolls his eyes before his lids droop, and Dex is struck with the fact he’s tired as he shifts around, trying to get more comfortable in his lap.

“Maybe you should try actually sleeping at night instead of watching paint mixing videos at two in the morning. Could possibly improve your focus,” Dex chirps, poking Nursey’s stomach.

“Hm,” Nursey says, eyes closed, a teasing smile pushing at the corner of his mouth, “sounds fake.”

“You’re such a drama queen,” Dex mumbles, running a hand through his hair, “what could Mr. 4.0, came into college with a bunch of his credits already knocked out and half the syllabus memorized possibly have to lose sleep over? You’ve got everything, dude.”

Nursey opens his eyes, and they seem to rake over Dex’s frame in a way that feels like an appraisal. Dex’s heart skips a beat when Nursey fixes him with an intense, heavy gaze and clears his throat before muttering a quiet, “well. Not everything.”

Dex wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss him so bad he can’t breathe. And it would be so easy, to curl his hand under Nursey’s neck and bring him up to his lips, and feel the entire world fall away piece by piece. His fingers twitch and he feels restless, shifty.

He settles for edging the hem of Nursey’s pant leg up and rubbing his thumb over the delicate bones in his ankle. Even though Dex is 100% over this Victorian bullshit, something warm unfolds inside him when Nursey shudders.

**vi.**

He resolves to fix the Haus dryer on Saturday - apparently someone put a fucking mini vaccum in with the last load (he suspects Shitty) - and after approximately three hours of work, he’s close enough to making it run that he feels he’s earned a break. Leaning up against the side of the washer, he shoots Nursey a quick text asking if he can bring him down a piece of Bitty’s latest peach pie.

He’s there minutes later, stumbling down the stairs like someone pushed him, and when he crosses the threshold of the laundry room, his eyes seem to go a shade darker.

Dex’s cheeks burn. He probably looks ridiculous, grease smeared over his cheek, in one of those stupid white ribbed tank tops that’s probably a little too small for him. He probably looks dirty and gross. But Nursey isn’t staring at him like he’s dirty and gross, no, the glint in his eye as he gives Dex a painfully slow once over is decidedly not of disgust.

“Sometimes,” Nursey says, setting down the pie without taking his eyes off Dex, “I think you were custom made to torture me.”

Heat blazes across Dex’s cheeks so fast he barely has time to try and temper the reaction. Fuck. “Don’t say stuff like that,” Dex grumbles, reaching to swipe the pie off the counter and stab a fork into it.

“Sorry.” Nursey has never looked less remorseful.

He hops up on the washer, stupidly long legs dangling over the side, and decides to stay for the remainder of the repair process because he is an annoying pain in the ass. Dex is glad he got all the tricky bits out of the way because he can barely manage higher brain functions with Nursey’s dark, secret trailing over him every twenty seconds.

When he finishes up, he feels like he’s on fire and it makes him bold. He rises to the edge of the washer until he’s close enough that Nursey’s legs fall on either side of him. He doesn’t quite know what he’s going to do until Nursey picks up a clean rag and wipes it across Dex’s forehead, clearing the sweat and the grease that accumulated during the repair process. Dex’s hands come to rest on the tops of Nursey’s thighs as the rag moves across his cheek, his chin, his jaw. When the corner of Nursey’s pinky brushes his lips Dex feels his breath hitch in his chest.

“This is kind of gross, right?” he asks, eyeing the now sweaty rag with distrust.

Nursey smiles and drops it onto the lid of the washer. “Nah.”

**vii.**

Nursey is the most sentimental person Dex has ever met, he romanticizes everything, from burnt toast to barely functioning dryers to the knots in his own hair. When Dex’s nineteenth birthday rolls around, he gets him a wrist cushion for his keyboard with a Chuck Palahniuk quote stitched across the plush. Inside the card is a scrap of poetry Dex has googled six ways to Sunday, almost afraid of the possibility that it’s an original. An original about him.

He’s not really sure how he’s supposed to beat that, especially considering Nursey is annoying prep school kid whose bank balance would probably make Dex’s heart shrivel in on itself.

He settles for just asking him what he wants – he’s not an intuitive friend like the rest of them, he has had to learn how to get to know people and to let them get to know him in kind. Besides, Nursey will probably say something stupid to satisfy a need of that particular moment like ‘that binder from across the room’, and Dex isn’t passing up the chance to chirp him relentlessly for it.

They’re tangled up on Nursey’s bed just a day before Valentines, and they’re supposed to be doing homework but Nursey’s foot keeps sliding along the length Dex’s calf and breaking his concentration whenever he makes headway in any subject. He huffs many an exasperated sigh, but never tells Nursey to stop, which brings an all-too self-satisfied smile to that fucker’s face.

“Hey,” Dex says, poking Nursey’s leg. Nursey looks up from his Neruda, hooded eyes lazily focused on Dex. “What do you want for your birthday this year?”

There’s a beat where neither of them say anything, and then Nursey pushes off the wall and crawls over to where Dex is lying, propped up on his elbows. He gets close, close like his hands are on either side of Dex’s head and their legs are slotted together like pieces in a puzzle. He hovers over Dex’s face and Dex thinks, for the millionth time, about how easy it would be. How everything he wants right now is half a foot away, and he’s not brave enough to reach for it. Nursey gives him a few minutes, to gather his courage, to do something other than lay there like a limp noodle, but he realizes very quickly that Dex is annoying and terrible.

“Come on, Poindexter,” he sighs, leaning down and bumping their noses together before retreating back to his corner of the bed. Dex wants bite him. “What have I always wanted from you?”

**viii.**

Dex gives it to him. He chugs a beer for his nerves and when they turn in for the night, closing the door of the attic behind them, Dex shuts his brain off, crowds Nursey up against a wall, and hesitates in front of his lips.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Dex mumbles, and Nursey noses along his cheek in a way so sweet and soft that Dex’s heart squeezes in his chest. In the end, it’s Nursey who leans forward and crushes their lips together in a kiss more bruising than the last.

Nursey makes a quiet, beautiful sound against his mouth before his arms come to curl around Dex’s neck, his head instinctively tilting for a better angle. He could do that thing where he bites Dex’s lip and slips his tongue into his mouth every day for the rest of his life and Dex doesn’t think he’d ever get tired of it.

They break for air but they don’t stop, Nursey kisses Dex’s jaw and then his neck, his fingers edging up the hem of Dex’s sweater, unbelievably cool against the V of his hips.

“I want so much with you,” Nursey mumbles against the hollow of his neck, before pressing three slow, languid kisses against Dex’s mouth.

His hand slips just below the waist of Dex’s pants and Dex’s whole body draws taut like he’s facing a fight or flight response. Nursey’s hand slides lower, and Dex thinks: you can have it. You can have everything you want. But instead he gasps a quiet, needy, “Derek” right into Nursey’s ear, and Nursey spins them around, pressing Dex into the wall behind them.

“I want everything with you,” Nursey sighs, and Dex barely hears it over the roar in his ears when Nursey pops the button his jeans.

**ix.**

Dex wakes up to Nursey’s fingers brushing softly through his hair, down the tendon of his neck, thumb dipping into the hollow at his throat.

“Hi,” he says quietly, hand coming to cup Dex’s cheek. He wiggles closer and kisses him, and any anxiety Dex felt at waking up with a completely naked boy next to him and about a thousand hickeys on his chest seems to dissipate, like poison drawn out by Nursey’s lips.

He wants to say: you are the best thing that ever happened to me.

Instead he says: “gross.” And Nursey laughs, punching his chest and pulling him closer in the space of a moment, still moving lips pushed against Dex’s chest.

“I’m in love with you,” Dex grumbles, pressing his fingers against the knobs of Nursey’s spine, steadily making his way to the beautiful curve his lower back. “When did that happen?”

“Huh,” Nursey says, and Dex can feel the smile on his lips as he snuggles deeper into Dex’s chest, “that’s pretty embarrassing, bro. Wouldn’t tell anyone if I was you.”

Dex pushes him out of bed.

**x.**

It happens like this:

They are seniors and Chris Chow is captain of the hockey team and sometimes Nursey sleeps on the bottom bunk even though they still don’t tell anyone and they still don’t talk about it. Dex is better. He read a book about two boys kissing and he didn’t freak out. The day after he finished it he called his mom and they talked for three hours on the phone. She still loves him even though she doesn’t really understand.

He gives the book to Nursey with a soft kiss to the temple. It means I love you, and he thinks Nursey might get that now.

It happens like this:

Bitty and Jack are visiting for the weekend, putting the oven back to good use as they whip up tarts and pies and brownies all in the span of one morning. The whole team plus Farmer plus Holster and Ransom and Shitty and Lardo are all crowded around the breakfast table swapping their favorite naked Shitty stories and bitching about the LAX bros.

Dex has to meet his lab partner in thirty minutes for a project. He starts to get up, but Nursey grabs his hand before he goes and asks, sleepy green eyes fluttering, “You’ll be back for lunch, right?”

Dex doesn’t even think about it when he says “of course” and sweeps down to press a kiss on his forehead.

Nursey tenses up, and seconds later so does Dex. The room goes so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

And then Farmer elbows Chowder’s side and says, “you owe me twenty bucks.”

It happens like this:

“So are you guys boyfriends now?” Whiskey asks, eyeing him with what Dex might think was jealousy if he didn’t know any better.

“Yeah,” Dex says, and the response is immediate, like smiling or laughing or breathing. He turns to Nursey, who still looks like something he wants to touch. “I guess we are.”


End file.
